Troubleshooting application deployment in SCCM 2012 doesn’t have to be hard. Here’s an easy way to troubleshoot application deployment issues in SCCM 2012:

Firstly troubleshoot application deployment using the SCCM 2012 console. Monitor the application deployment. Alternatively you can do an SCCM report from the Monitoring -> Reports -> Software Distribution groups.

If the application isn’t deploying to any computers / users, then you might check the settings in the collection to ensure the user is in the collection (if adding users to AD groups, don’t forget to log on / off for users or restart if adding computers to AD groups, so they get their security token). You might also check the package / application to ensure that it’s settings are correct – make sure the application has distribution points set up, an appropriate schedule and is set to install as required, rather than available (assuming you want to mandate the install).

Ensure that the application has been synchronised to distribution points and that there’s not an issue with cache. While we’re on the subject of cache, make sure the application isn’t too large for the SCCM Client’s cache.

Check to see if the package is being downloaded, but the shortcut is not. In which case, SCCM deployment may be working fine, but you have another issue that you need to troubleshoot (such as a profile manager or invalid package).

If you are just troubleshooting SCCM application deployment on a small percentage of PCs, you may be looking at a WMI issue or corrupted SCCM Client. Running a WMI query from PowerShell (Run as Administrator) such as Get-WmiObject -Namespace “root/ccm” -class clientinfo ininternet -computername XXXXX, will tell you if WMI is corrupt on the target computer (named XXXXX). Reinstall the OS or repair WMI on the PC and try again.

A clue that the SCCM client may be corrupt would be if it is missing actions on the Action tab of Configuration Manager (launched from the Control Panel). Reinstalling

Another good troubleshooting tip is to use the SCCM Client Center tool to troubleshoot application deployment on individual PCs. With this, you can view details of advertisements the PC knows about, force the SCCM client to redownload / apply policy, rerun advertisements, see what executions have happened in SCCM, see associated errors and more. Lots of good application deployment troubleshooting options here.

If the above doesn’t help, check the SCCM logs. Using CMTrace.exe helps troubleshooting as it highlights errors and makes SCCM logs easier to read.

Failing that, leave a message in the appropriate place in the forum and someone will help you troubleshoot your application deployment issue 🙂